Chennai Corner

‘Nadu’ is Kodanadu.

Tamil Nadu CM Karunanidhi has been busy travelling to different parts of the state after almost a year of staying put in Chennai. One must marvel at an 86-year-old man who is wheel-chair bound finding the energy to criss-cross the state even if it is by plane or custom made vans and has son, M K Stalin (deputy CM) or daughter Kanimozhi (Rajya Sabha MP) accompanying him. In contrast, Jayalalitha prefers the cool climes of Kodanadu, prompting even Stalin, who is normally mild as compared to his acerbic older brother M K Azhagiri, to quip:  "For the CM, ‘Nadu’ means Tamil Nadu. For Jayalalithaa ‘Nadu’ is Kodanadu.”

Egg on his face

Coming back to the CM’s current travails, while on one hand he has to answer to AIADMK chief Jayalalitha – who has proclaimed that threats will not deter her from her Madurai meeting in October after two more death threats were followed by a demand for a CBI inquiry by a party MP – what really gets his goat is when left leaders call him to account.

And the DMK party organ’s mouthpiece, Murasoli, is where he is taking left leaders apart. Reminds one of the bitter bickering between spouses after a divorce. “It really is disappointing that the CPM, which has sworn to work for the betterment of the downtrodden, has stooped to this level of jealousy,” he said responding to the CPM’s comment that the CM’s largesse – five instead of three eggs a week for schoolchildren covered by the noon meal scheme – was driven by his cynical desire to actually benefit poultry farmers.

Five eggs means the supply of 20 lakh more eggs per day. And the state has to shell out Rs 125 crores in addition to Rs 178 crore it is already spending on eggs. Thus we are not talking small change but Rs 303 crore annually. The CPM’s take is that the CM’s announcement came within 24 hours after the poultry owners met him. Therefore he wanted to keep them happy rather than give more nutrition to the schoolchildren, they alleged. The CM’s defence is that when they met him he told them to drop their prices. But so far there has been no such announcement from egg producers.

“Fountainhead of corruption”

“Has Jayalalitha suddenly become pure and I have become corrupt in their eyes,” raged the CM, reminding the CPM that it had given him a memorandum seeking action against the alleged encroachment by Jayalalitha’s (who was CM at the time) aides on land belonging to Dalits. The AIADMK chief was accused of encroaching on land not only allocated to Dalits but even government land that belonged to Tamil Nadu Small Industries Corporation (TANSI). The CM asked, “What is the corruption we have indulged in?” His friends would advise him not to even open that door. In fact, recently while releasing the audio of a film produced by his grand-nephew Amirtham (grandson of the CM’s sister), Karunanidhi was again forced to defend his family’s film connections.The CM was apparently defiant in the face of the avalanche of criticism, “Not just my grandchildren, but even my great grandchildren will be there,” he said.

He even rounded on the CPI's D. Pandian who said the state government should increase the unit cost of the Kalaignar Housing Scheme – which aims at converting 21 lakh huts into concrete houses over six years – to Rs three lakh. Recently, the CM had hiked the cost from Rs 60,000 to Rs 75,000, thus increasing the annual expenditure to Rs 2250 crore. Saying that if the CPI’s demand should be conceded, the government would have to spend Rs 9,000 crore, Karunanidhi fumed, “The idea behind such sweeping demands is that the scheme should not succeed.”

Over to the left. Does their heart really bleed for the poor, or it’s all politics? 

The swine flu panic

When alarm bells were ringing all over the world after the WHO declared swine flu was a pandemic, India, after the initial panic following the death of a schoolgirl in Pune, faced up to the disease with stoicism. In Tamil Nadu, there was a scare, a few masks were bought and I remember going to the Andiyur horse fair near Erode last year, where thousands of people converge, and thinking – this is a place ripe for the spread of the infection. But thousands came from the villages nearby oblivious that the TV-watching public had one finger on the panic button behind their surgical masks!

This season, the WHO has withdrawn the pandemic alert – many doctors and researchers say the alert was at the behest of some pharmaceuticals which made a killing (pun intended) – but the alarm has finally hit Tamil Nadu’s people; last year those who manifested the disease were NRIs mostly. According to an action taken report, the health department filed before the Madras high court, nine deaths have been recorded by the department. There have been four other deaths recorded by corporation hospitals. Four died in two weeks out of the 736 confirmed cases. But a farmer dying near Coimbatore is the cause for anxiety because “it means the disease has been spreading laterally” as Dr P. Gunasekaran, deputy director, Guindy’s King Institute, puts it. The Guindy Institute is receiving at least 50 throat swabs a day, of which one-fourth are detected as positive. Chennai has recorded 169 cases in the last two months, including 51 people now undergoing treatment. Last year 930 persons were detected with the virus and four of them had died.

“What we need is intensive monitoring at the village level, as the virus has entrenched itself in the general population. Those who became carriers of AH1N1 virus in the first wave are passing the infection on to others, with the monsoon acting to the virus’ advantage,” explains Dr S. Elango, former director of public health.

Flu politics

But cynically, politics has entered the picture. Last week, AIADMK chief Jayalalitha wondered why flu vaccines were not administered free by allocating a part of the Rs 3,889 crore meant for public health in the budget. It was the health minister Paneesselvam’s statement that the government could not administer vaccines free that invited her comment that people could not afford Rs 600 at private hospitals. All it took was her reference to the government’s payment of Rs 3000 crore to a private insurance company for the Kalaignar Insurance Scheme for yet another freebie to be born. With about eight months to go for election, Karunanidhi does want to be found wanting that too on an emotive issue. So for BPL it’s going to be free and for others, it’s going to be subsidized.

Should we vaccinate or not?

The vaccination drive is just as extreme as the state of denial that the Directorate of Public Health (DPH) was in even as late as last month when three women had died of swine flu between August 11 and 29, in private hospitals.

But the jury is still out on whether people should be vaccinated against the flu. “Vaccination against any virus has been generally regarded as the best option available to physicians to prevent its spread. However, in this case, we are practising more caution in advising the anxious public to go for the vaccine as the virus is, by and large, not life threatening to most who are affected,” says a senior physician at a city hospital.

His argument was that while clinical trials have been successful, the vaccine was prepared in a hurry. “In the past, when large parts of the world were affected by the Spanish flu, a similar vaccine was brought into the market and the public hastily went for it. Unfortunately, the vaccine caused more havoc than the virus itself,” says another doctor.

But T.S. Parmar, vice-president for business development at Zyelus Cadilla, the firm that produces Vaxiflu-S, has been quoted as saying “All H1N1 vaccines are produced using the seed given by the WHO. In India, our product was launched in June 2010 and crores of people have already used it with minimal side-effects.” The manufacturers claim that a vaccine shot could be our best choice. But people are not taking chances. Nor is the corporation, going by the photographs in newspapers showing people getting vaccinated or being administered the vaccine as a nasal spray.